"Earlier in the day I had sent a blog home to my mom to post. It started off with a bad attempt at humor, saying "its been a crazy few days out here, the long and the short of it is, one long wave and one short, meaning a two inch stub of a mast." It wasn't funny, but at the time my choices were pretty limited, cry, or cry, or make a lame joke and pretend its funny. I went with the third option."

"An awesome evening in Buckingham Palace .....! What a privilege! Amid the splendour of the State rooms with their magnificent paintings and with several relevant displays of original letters, photos and other objects from explorations and adventures over the last two centuries, we were all presented to the Queen and Prince Philip who were hosting a Reception to mark the centenary of Capt Scott's final expedition to the S. Pole. The Reception was intended to recognise the accomplishments of those involved in exploration and adventure in all its forms. "

Laura should be at the Galapagos Islands today. She has a kitty named "Kiwi" on board. And some blokes.

Roz has regretfully postponed the XAtlantic row to the Olympics due to abnormal icebergs.

"I weighed up the pros and cons of carrying on with the row. There were 7 points on each side. But when one of the "con" points is "risk of death significantly higher than anticipated", you really have to give that one a higher weighting. "

Interesting that the post morphed from "the youngest woman to attempt an around the world sail unassisted", (with many stops along the way) to "the oldest women to attempt an around the world sail unassisted".